The Australasian Leukaemia and Lymphoma Group (ALLG) is Australia and New Zealand’s only not-for-profit blood cancer clinical trial research group.

ALLG clinical trials have advanced many treatments for blood cancers over the last five decades. Our trials have contributed to what are now standard treatments in Australia and New Zealand in AML and other conditions.

ALLG aims to cure patients with blood cancers; finding more effective and less toxic therapies to improve and lengthen lives.

Since 1973 the ALLG’s purpose has and continues to be ‘Better treatments…Better lives’ for patients with blood cancer. The Group has been conducting clinical trials for the treatment and cure of blood cancers since 1973.

This year, 2023, we celebrate 50 years of progress in blood cancer treatments through ALLG clinical trials in Australasia. The ALLG members are blood cancer specialists driven by this purpose and will continue to build on five decades of progress as we look to the future; with the aim to cure blood cancer.

In this ALLG 5 decades of impact in blood cancer you will read about our research efforts to help patients and health care providers provide better patient outcomes.

Patients’ lives are at the centre of what we do. We are dedicated to identifying ways to ensure the best treatments possible. We remain resolute in our primary focus “better treatments…better lives”.

Accelerating the best science, evidence and effective outcomes in clinical trials, through ALLG’s Scientific Research Strategy:

The ALLG provides the infrastructure and governance necessary for our members – Australian and New Zealand doctors, scientists and support staff – to work together to conduct multi-disciplinary clinical research into specific blood cancers that are still very problematic to treat, to evaluate the effectiveness of new treatments, patients’ quality of life and the cost-effectiveness of therapies.

Clinical trials are the engine of cancer research. Every new and improved treatment is only made by possible through clinical trial research.

For 50 years, the ALLG has been the only not-for-profit clinical trial organisation for blood cancer in Australia and New Zealand that sponsors clinical trials initiated and led by its members.

There are still too many blood cancers that present significant treatment challenges for doctors and their patients. Laboratory research and clinical trials are the only way to create a new wave of discoveries and to offer new medicines.

Patients with hard-to-treat blood cancers have no other way to gain access to innovative, potentially life-saving, new treatments.

ALLG’s comprehensive scientific research strategy will drive the change needed now to achieve better blood cancer treatments for these patients.

ALLG’s clinical trial research brings hope to patients and their families

Discovering new and more effective treatments with less side effects, while aiming for a cure for people with blood cancer, will not only improve patients’ wellbeing and save more lives it will also help save costs to our health system.

There is a 5.8:1 benefit-to-cost ratio of clinical trials – meaning that for each $1 invested in clinician-driven clinical trials in Australia, benefits of $5.80 can be realised; according to a report from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care and the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance on the economic return on investment of investigator-initiated clinical trials conducted by networks.

Global leaders with global impact

Several ALLG trials have resulted in new internationally adopted treatment protocols, expanded indications for existing treatments and increased international focus on Australia’s position as a leader in the blood cancer field.

Better treatments – Changing and improving clinical practice and patients’ lives

Translational research: National Blood Cancer Registry and Biobank – for researchers to better understand disease biology and provide clinical pathways for more effective, targeted, treatments.

Over the past 50 years, the ALLG has had:

Improving patient access to clinical trials and leading-edge treatments – through ALLG’s international clinical trial collaborations

Advocacy

ALLG is advancing health equity and clinical trials through its government consultations, ALLG’s Rural and Regional Haematology Working Group, involvement in the Australian Teletrials Program, and through ALLG’s Consumer Representative Panel of blood cancer survivors.

About ALLG

The ALLG membership represents more than 1,000 haematologists, scientists, and clinical trial research staff across Australia and New Zealand. Being a member-based not-for-profit group allows us to be independent of industry / pharma and put action plans in place for all blood cancer diseases, not just one blood cancer type.

ALLG members are clinician researchers who volunteer their time and expertise; committed to finding better treatments for better lives of patients with blood cancer by undertaking clinical trial research. Our members include preeminent experts in various blood disorder conditions, both here and globally. Life Members include true pioneers in the field of haematology and oncology.